Would Pep Guardiola manage England? There may never be a better time to ask

Three months have passed since Gareth Southgate announced he was leaving the England job — and it appears we are no closer to knowing the identity of his full-time successor.

After comfortable victories for the 2024 European Championship finalists over nations ranked 62nd (Republic of Ireland) and 64th (Finland) in the world, the tide surged perplexingly quickly towards an assumption that interim manager Lee Carsley, a man with no experience of managing top-level players, should and would be promoted from his position leading England Under-21s.

Now, after a hapless 2-1 home defeat against 48th-ranked Greece on Thursday, the expectation is that Carsley has blown his chances.

You would hope the FA is not working along the same extreme lines of hot-cold opinions based on these Nations League games, but, if they have not even interviewed anyone else yet, well, draw your own conclusions there. Carsley, for his part, said on Saturday he had not formally applied to be Southgate’s successor.

To be fair to the people in charge at the association, if they felt there was no viable external candidate, seeing what Carsley could do in fairly low-risk fixtures made sense, given that finding a successor from within St George’s Park would clearly be preferable as a justification for the investment and structures put in place there.

It worked with Southgate, who himself stepped up from the under-21s in 2016 after the one-game Sam Allardyce era, to a large extent; in terms of tournament results, he was England’s best manager for almost 60 years and took the team, with the aid of a burgeoning and increasingly talented pool of players, to heights that did not seem possible a decade ago.

Ultimately, Southgate fell short of achieving what he and the country wanted, ending the long wait to win a tournament again. What was the primary reason for that? Tactical shortcomings.

As players such as Jude Bellingham, Harry Kane and Declan Rice went up in the world, earning big moves to higher levels with Real Madrid, Bayern Munich and Arsenal, they overtook Southgate, who lacked the knowledge to blend them and Phil Foden, or Jack Grealish, or Cole Palmer into a cohesive attacking unit.

Southgate had many other strengths, but in terms of nailing a playing style that best suited the stars he was blessed with, he came up short, be that failing to unlock the best from Foden or Trent Alexander-Arnold, or being too cautious with his tactical approach or his substitutions.

When looking for a successor to take on what Southgate built and move it up the level required to beat the likes of Spain, France and Italy by playing, not by pragmatism or by trying to stifle the opposition, England need someone who has a high level of football intelligence; preferably somebody with a track record of winning trophies and who would command the instant respect of the players.

And, you know, if that person knows the English game inside out, is out of contract next summer and happens to be one of the greatest managers of all time, even better.

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

I mean, would Pep Guardiola genuinely take the England job? Even, say, for one year, post-Manchester City and just for the World Cup in 2026?

“I have to decide what I want to do with my life,” Guardiola said in August when asked about then managerless England. “Do I want to continue here? Take a break? National teams or not? Many things.” Well, that’s not a no.

With the exit of City’s director of football Txiki Begiristain next summer revealed by The Athletic and with Guardiola having won it all during his eight years in charge at the Etihad, it does feel like the end of an era is approaching.

Guardiola, who has essentially completed England, Germany and Spain with City, Bayern Munich and Barcelona, may be tempted by the challenge of resolving one of world football’s most difficult conundrums — leading England to their first trophy in almost six decades.

After 11 consecutive seasons with Bayern and City, the lighter demands of international football could also appeal. As could the size of the challenge — ie, something achievable that doesn’t require reinventing the wheel.

Guardiola’s City contract expires at the end of this season (Martin Rickett/PA Images via Getty Images)

Guardiola was announced as Bayern’s next manager at a time when they had finished third and second domestically in the two preceding seasons. City came second and fourth in the two years before he moved to Manchester. That is the history of a manager who likes the idea of taking a good but imperfect team and making them winners.

England have made it to at least the last eight of their past four tournaments and two finals in three, so they don’t need a revolution either; Guardiola may feel that, for a year’s work with these players, it is within his capabilities to win the World Cup, one of the crowning achievements of any manager’s career.

Would the FA pay up? Guardiola is reported to earn £20million ($26.1m) a year, whereas Southgate was said to earn around £5m per annum. Meeting in the middle may require the FA to double its offering and for Guardiola to halve his. Feels unlikely.

And then there is the question of whether the FA would want another non-English manager. Guardiola compares favourably to the two foreign managers England have appointed in the past, with neither Sven-Goran Eriksson nor Fabio Capello having anywhere near as a good a record, but more importantly, they had to acclimatise to English football’s culture, especially our media. Not an issue for Guardiola.

It is worth pointing out that the path of a non-native manager leading a country to tournament glory is not a well-trodden one.

Every single World Cup-winning manager has come from the nation that lifted the trophy. Of the 17 European Championships, only Otto Rehhagel (from Germany) won it with another country, Greece in 2004.

And of the Copa America’s 19 playings since the mid-1970s, when South America’s continental tournament was rebranded, 17 have been won by native managers, with Chile the exceptions in 2015 and 2016 when they were managed by Argentina’s Jorge Sampaoli and Argentine-born Spaniard Juan Antonio Pizzi respectively.

The Africa Cup of Nations is the obvious exception, with only 17 of its 34 tournament-winning managers hailing from the country concerned.

As England have experienced with Rice and Grealish ‘joining’ them from the Republic of Ireland, and Wilfried Zaha switching to Ivory Coast, the lines of nationality in international football are becoming more blurred. Would it actually mean anything that Guardiola isn’t English?

England’s cricket team won the Ashes in 2005 with a Zimbabwean (Duncan Fletcher) and the 2019 World Cup with an Australian (Trevor Bayliss) as their coach, and it is hard to imagine any English cricket fan celebrated those successes any less because of the nationality of the coach, ditto the Irishman Eoin Morgan being the captain for the latter.

While it would be preferable from the FA’s point of view to hire from within, or appoint an Englishman, if the best person for the job is neither of those things, it would be foolish or one-eyed were it not to expand its limited pool of options.

Copying the successful Spain-Luis de la Fuente or Argentina-Lionel Scaloni models is fine if you have managers and coaches worthy of the top job via a well-honed setup, but England as a nation does not have a history of producing the brightest and best revolutionary coaches in football. Far from it.

Since the 1992-93 season, just six per cent of Premier League titles, FA Cups and EFL Cups combined have been won by English managers. In that same period, 12 per cent of Premier League titles, FA Cups and EFL Cups combined have been won by Guardiola.

Yes, he has had the money to spend, but his managerial capabilities and tactical nous are undeniable. He would be, by some distance, the best manager ever to take the England job.

Is there a world in which this all works? Maybe not, but for the love of God, ask the guy the question.

The FA tried for Jose Mourinho in 2007, and went for Arsene Wenger in 2016.

If it didn’t go for Guardiola should he be out of contract next year… well, it is part of the problem.

(Photo: Alex Pantling/Getty Images )